Brush (stroke) with destiny

Image of boy artist created in 2000 resembles young Obama

Image of boy artist created in 2000 resembles young Obama

February 20, 2009|By LOU MUMFORD Tribune columnist

NILES -- Maybe he knew something the rest of us didn't. "He" is Joel Camp, a Niles artist who in 2000 painted a picture of a roughly 10-year-old boy. And he indeed bears a resemblance to President Barack Obama. "He has the Bing Crosby ears," Camp said. He said the painting, titled "Sherman's List," was in a juried show and displayed in a museum in Elkhart for 4 1/2 months in 2000. He hadn't thought much about it, he said, until last summer when he was thumbing through a copy of Time magazine and came across a picture of Obama in his youth. He was struck immediately, he said, by how much the young president-to-be looked like the boy in his painting. "He has the same expression and everything," he said. As for the boy portrayed in the painting, he was patterned after a child in a photograph Camp had spotted in a magazine a number of years ago. Camp said he has no idea who the boy was but he was photographed by a fairly well-known African-American photographer who did much of his work about a century ago. Camp said he can't recall the photographer's name but, according to the magazine story, he was walking down the street one day when he observed the boy and asked if he could take his picture. The photograph simply shows the youth in a standing position, but in Camp's painting he decided to portray him as poor by adding bare feet. He's standing next to a storage shed and in front of a dump or landfill, Camp said, and he's holding in the painting a list of items he's supposedly hoping to purchase for family members once he's successful. Although the list hasn't anything to do with the White House, Camp said he remembers thinking when he made the painting that becoming president of the United States could have been one of the boy's ambitions. "It's like I prophesied that one day we'd have an African American for president," he said. Camp said he selected the name Sherman after one of the characters on the old television show. In the next several weeks, Camp will send the painting to the White House, he said. Initially, his thought was to send it directly to Obama but he now believes the better course might be to send it to the president's mother-in-law, Marian Robinson, who also resides in the White House. His thought, Camp said, is that the president has a better chance of seeing the painting should Robinson see it first and perhaps urge him to take a look. Should the painting indeed come to his attention, the president will see a boy that not only resembles him but is left-handed just like the president. Camp said he doesn't know why but he portrayed the youth holding in his left hand the pencil to make his list. Coincidence or not, Camp said there's no doubt he was inspired while creating the piece. "I'm thinking about having prints made," he said.